Yesterday morning, I walked up to a door outside an old house in Ottawa to be greeted by three exceptionally black people. After a few minutes conversation, I handed my passport and $100 cash to one of the individuals outside the house, and walked back to my car. No receipt. No paperwork. Just trust.
Now, I doubt many people would have that level of trust but circumstances, experience and a dose of common sense allowed me to make the decision. This summer, I’ll be spending a few days in Zimbabwe, taking advantage of a rather rare confluence of circumstances including our son’s time in summer camp, my wife’s wish to visit Europe and a Star Alliance business class points sale. Vivian has no desire to visit Zimbabwe, but this is where I discovered the secrets of life as a journalist in 1978-80, and now I would be able to return, virtually without cost (and in some luxury) to remember the place that defined my life some three decades ago.
Canadians, however, require visas for Zimbabwe. I know well enough that I shouldn’t even think of trying to enter the country as a journalist, nor to practice journalism there. (Some luck and a bit of fast thinking earned me a work permit marked “journalist” on my previous visit, but I doubt I could pull that off this time around.) So I decided I will visit Victoria Falls, take a side trip to a nearby game park in Botswana, and spend just one night in my old home, Bulawayo. The visit to Botswana means that I will need a multiple-entry visa, I thought, so following the embassy website’s instructions, I obtained a bank money order for $200, twice the one-time visa fee. I gathered my passport photos, completed the documentation, and then drove downtown to the Zimbabwe embassy, observing that (like many foreign missions) the embassy keeps extremely limited business hours — for consular affairs, the place is open 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays only.
At 9 a.m. I met the three people standing outside the door. My cohorts were certainly friendly, asking if I’ve ever been to Zimbabwe. I explained briefly my background and connection with the country. ”You should consider investing in Zimbabwe. Things are much better now.” I demurred. Then one person said she could take the application. I showed her the money order. ”Oh, we don’t do multiple entry visas here, but the website hasn’t been updated.” I proposed giving her the single entry fee in cash. She saw I had a return courier envelope. ”You don’t need that, unless you want us to mail the visa back to you,” she said. So I handed her the passport, passport photos, visa application and $100 in cash. ”It could take two weeks but sometimes things go wrong. If that happens, phone us,” she said, taking my cellular number.
At 2 p.m. the person who took my stuff — and didn’t give me a receipt — called me to say my visa is ready, so I’ll head down to the embassy this morning to retrieve my passport, stamped to allow me into the country.
Surely, I doubt most of us would even consider to do what I did yesterday morning. But I assessed the circumstances on the spot.I was indeed at the embassy, and the individual who took my passport certainly asked questions and behaved in a manner which led me to believe she was a qualified consular official. And I know something about Zimbabwe, and the informality of rules and processes in sub-Saharan Africa, so deduced the same situations would apply at the country’s Canadian office. In any case, I thought, I don’t need to travel anywhere requiring a passport immediately, and if there are problems, I could call Canadian authorities, explain the situation, and prove that indeed I had a vacation planned for Zimbabwe. So I would experience some inconvenience, but no significant loss.
Later in the day, just before the confirmation call from the Zimbabwe embassy, our credit card processing company called. They were questioning a set of transactions, where we had processed duplicate payment amounts to settle some long-standing invoices, with the client’s authority. These payments would be put on hold until we could document everything. The credit card system’s fraud detection systems decided we needed to be checked out further. Fair enough. Not a lot of trust there, but I can see why the red flags were raised.
Trust is a vital element in marketing. In effect, the goal of marketing is to raise the level of trust so that people will want to do business with us, letting own their guards, fears, and aversion to change (or reinforcing these qualities, if we are the incumbents). We earn and develop trust through a variety of circumstances and trust isn’t a universal one-size-fits-all situation.
I wouldn’t expect you to trust a Zimbabwean consular official in Ottawa, nor would I expect you to want to visit the southern African country for a vacation. Too much risk, I think, for most people from most of the world. And if I were a credit card company, I would question why four charges of exactly the same amount would be processed in two batches over two weeks, regardless of the bona-fide reason.
Of course, when trust goes wrong, things can get really bad. I’m working on a story involving a surety company that has a real mess on its hands because a major Canadian contractor’s millions of dollars in bonds went into default after the bank forced the contractor into receivership. The court documents I retreived are interesting, as they show how the bank and surety company tried to right the wrongs before pulling the plug. I may never know the full story.
The challenge in business is to reach the stage where you can trust, rationally, because this gives you opportunities that others would miss. Equally, you need to know when to be cautious. If marketing can help you earn well-deserved trust from others who may be skeptics, then you have done well. Alas, some of the biggest con-artists also know how to market themselves effectively. This is the inverse side of the marketing coin.